100 BIRDS 



nesting, selecting, if convenient, second-growth timber, espe- 

 cially if there be a thicket of undergrowth. But if these 

 conditions be not at hand, it seems to prefer, as a site for 

 its nest, an old, abandoned orchard, or at least one some- 

 what remote from human habitation, but not very far 

 distant from a stream or pond. In the fork of some tree, 

 ten to twenty feet above ground, is collected a considerable- 

 sized but irregular and loose bundle of rough sticks. In 

 this, by the middle of May, or at times even earlier, it lays 

 from three to six greenish-blue eggs, about an inch and a 

 half long by an inch and a quarter in diameter. 



It is quite interesting to see one of these herons feeding. 

 It will wade along the edge of a pond or stream, very 

 slowly lifting its feet out of the water and carefully putting 

 them down again. Its neck is folded so that it almost dis- 

 appears, the head being drawn back against the shoulders. 

 At last it sees an unwary minnow swimming lazily along. 

 Slowly and carefully it leans its body forward and down- 

 ward toward the water, the long legs looking and acting 

 almost like stilts; still more slowly the head, with its long, 

 stout beak, moves cautiously toward the water surface, very 

 much like a young turkey seeks to capture a grasshopper. 

 Then, suddenly, as if a spring had been set free in its neck, 

 the head is thrust dowTiward until the beak, or more, disap- 

 pears beneath the surface, but only to reappear immediately 

 with the struggling minnow or sunfish between its mandi- 

 bles, and walking out on the bank a safe distance, \^'ith 

 two or three strokes of his strong beak he stuns the fish, 

 which in another moment has started head first down the 

 heron's throat. Henry H. Lane. 



